Greetings all;
My name is Greg, and this is my technology-based blog. Why separate my interests, you might ask. Well, language is one thing - as a Christian, I choose to moderate my language elsewhere and under other circumstances. However, when you work with computers - and politics - sometimes it is just a relief to cut loose.
Another reason is because I tend to skip updating my weblogs. Which sort of goes against the whole idea, so this way, I hope to update at least one blog every day.
Enough of that. Let's get on with the business. The first thing I want to blog about is the installation of the open-source OS, GNU/Linux. But before we begin, let me take you on a short journey through my computing life.
My first contact with computers came when I was about 7 or 8, with the original 8086-based PC. My cousin had just bought himself one of those monsters, and it had TWO 5 1/4 floppy drives! Add in a monochrome monitor, and Karateka was happily playing away. Well, we were happily playing away, anyways.
My next contact was when I was perhaps 10, with the Apple II. I believe we had computing lessons using Basic, and then the Macintosh came on the scene, and the GUI was kinda cool - although the single button mouse kinda sucked.
From then on, though, the Wintel alliance dominated my computer scene. From the 386DX2, to the PII, and then the Pentium D 2.80GHz (yes, my computers last a long time!) on the hardware side, to Win3.1, 3.11, Win95 OSR2, WinME, Win2k, WinXP on the OS side.
Of course, when I attended Uni, the systems there were slightly different. We used iMacs for the 1st year CS labs, and SunRays for the UNIX machines (actually, they were dumb terminals 'running' Solaris, but who cares?)
So, all of this just to let you know that I am not a Tech Dummy. I read SharkTank and SharkBait and TechComedy same as any of you. But Microsoft OSes run supreme and while I am not a fanboy, I am however realistic. This is my system of choice.
So why switch to Linux? Not the first time I tried, believe me. I used Red Hat a few years ago, when XP first came out (and let me tell you, while XP runs quite nicely on a Celeron333, once you install anti-virus and anti-spyware with on-access scanning, it becomes a dog), and even on my old machine it just couldn't detect everything. Installing programs was the IT equivalent of dancing naked around a fire howling at the full moon after having slaughtered a white cock... you get the picture. (Here's a thought, Linux enthusiasts - why not INCLUDE all the damned packages needed to install a particular program WITH the bloody binary? Pocking around with RPM and APT was a little beyond my patience level then) Luckily, with LSB, I'm at least minimally sure that one program will work on MOST distros. (Here's another thought, guys, as long as you expect users to compile your source code, Linux will be nothing more than an elitist OS)
Well, hope springs eternal; Dell now sells PCs with Ubuntu loaded on them, and my bloody Vista's taking its own sweet time getting here. Support for WinME has dropped off the face of the planet, and let's face it, Win2K is pretty stable and secure but I dare not install anything heavy on it with my Celeron333. So, Linux sounds like a good alternative. My understanding is that it's not so demanding on hardware as Microsoft's products, and I always liked free.
So here goes; my documentation of my experiences installing Linux and the software it supports. My end goal is to end up with a Celeron333, 3874MB RAM and SiS300 (32MB) video card that is at least as capable as my Pentium D. I've clapped in a RAID ATA-133 controller as well, so I might use that as my file server if this whole thing works out. If it plays DVDs and does some video encoding as well, that would be the icing on the cake but let's face it, I doubt it would be practical.
Along the way, I hope to enlighten some newcomers to InfoTech as to what all this means. And put my awesome linguistic skills to work ;)
STEP ONE - Linux distro evaluation
Well, already I'm stuck. Do you know how many distros there are out there? If you include non-Linux such as BSD and all the variants of a core distribution, there are hundreds. Thousands.
What is a distro? Strictly speaking, Linux refers to the kernel of the OS. Some people do think that a kernel (and maybe a User Interface) should be all there is to an OS; others believe an OS should allow you to OPERATE your system; hence, a Linux Distribution is a collection of applications and support libraries, along with the kernel and various UIs (including Graphical UIs). A core distro, AFAIK, is also known as a 'flavour'. Properly, then, since Linux seeks to be UNIX-like in nature, a distribution is properly known as GNU/Linux.
Looking through the many, many, many distros out there, any sane person will begin to wonder which one is best, and why there are so many. Well, so argue the FOSS/Libre crowd, this provides you with a plethora of choices, which is what you want in a competitive environment. I am certainly not in the business of evaluating all the possible installations out there, so I will simply pick a few to have a look at.
The ones I chose, ultimately based only a cursory look, are Ubuntu (K- and X- also), PCLinuxOS. I would have tried Fedora, but apparently (according to the magazine CHiP), it's got a few bugs in it. I'm also downloading Freespire. I'm not forking out any money for Linspire, but I have an old version of Lindows. Most of these are based on Debian, btw.
So I spent 2 days downloading the ISOs. Yes, Streamyx, my local broadband provider, isn't exactly very good, but I don't have any choice.
Next up, STEP TWO - Installing Linux. Wish me luck!
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